12. Chapter Twelve
Chapter Twelve
Phoenix
Idon’t sleep, which is not unusual for me.
Sleep and I have never been in a committed relationship.
I get it when my body finally taps out, when the drugs turn the lights off, or when I have fucked some woman hard enough that a hotel mattress and a few hours of blackout start to appear close behind it.
Then morning comes and the world wants another piece of me.
But this is different. This is me lying in bed, phone in hand, staring at a screen that keeps proving the same ugly little fact. Willow has shut me out.
I stare at the texts I have sent her.
Phoenix: Wills, answer your phone.
Phoenix: You don’t get to disappear after looking at me like that.
Phoenix: Let me explain.
Phoenix: I know what it looked like.
Phoenix: Fuck. Willow. Please.
No delivered underneath. No proof they’ve reached her. Not even the cruel little comfort of knowing she is choosing to ignore me.
I stare at them until my eyes burn, as if I can glare hard enough to make it give me a sign that she has seen them.
But there is no sign. No answer. No angry paragraph telling me to go fuck myself.
Only silence.
I call her again around two in the morning because, apparently, I have become a desperate asshole with no self-respect and a humiliation kink.
It doesn’t ring the way it should. There is half a second of silence, before the call dies before it can even crawl its way to voicemail.
Then I call again, because I am an idiot, and because some sick, arrogant part of me still thinks persistence counts as power if I dress it up as control.
I almost throw the phone across the room, but that would be stupid because I would have to drag my pathetic ass over there, pick it up, and check whether she has answered.
Christ.
By three, I’m outside her apartment, knocking on her door hard enough to bruise my knuckles.
“Willow.”
I knock again, harder this time, because apparently shame has left the building, taking my last scrap of dignity with it.
“Wills, open the fucking door.”
Her neighbor opens instead, an old man in a robe with murder in his eyes, who tells me people are trying to sleep.
I tell him congratulations.
He tells me to leave before he calls security.
I leave because Willow is not here, and if I stay any longer, I might start doing pathetic shit like begging at a closed door, as if it gives a damn who I am.
By the time morning crawls in, I’m wired and half out of my mind. I head to the studio because some stupid part of me expects her to be there.
I walk in and my eyes go straight to the couch where Willow always sits, with one leg tucked under her, coffee in one hand and a notebook open on her lap.
The couch is empty. No coffee. No notebook.
I toss my jacket over a chair and grab the guitar from the stand, needing something solid in my hands before I feel the absence of her all over this room.
My fingers close around the neck, but the strings seem wrong under my fingers. Everything is off by half an inch. The air. The lights. The silence.
I hate that every empty space has her shape.
The door opens behind me and Cruz enters first.
He stops when he sees me and his face goes blank.
That has been happening since I fucked Willow that night at the club and let the whole band watch her come back alone, with hurt all over her face, and my fingerprints still on her skin.
Cruz used to throw insults at me for sport. Lazy ones. Dirty ones. The kind of shit we tossed around because silence meant something was wrong.
Now he gives me only silence.
Jett comes in after him, quiet as ever, coffee in hand, his gaze already taking in the room and landing on every ugly thing I have dragged in. Jax follows, drumsticks in his back pocket, jaw tight, eyes hard on me in a way I don’t like.
Jax usually has smart-ass comments, bad timing, dirty jokes, and a grin that can make a funeral feel inappropriately entertaining. This morning, there is none of it. Just his gaze on me and the whole place goes so fucking tense it feels like it’s about to split.
Jax sits behind the drums as Jett stands near his bass, sipping his coffee in silence.
Cruz leans against an amp, one shoulder to the wall, watching me as if waiting for me to make one more wrong move.
And the sad part is, I probably will.
I glance at the door again, waiting for Willow to walk through.
The next ten minutes are thin and ugly. Jax taps one stick against his palm, then stops. Jett doesn’t touch his bass. Cruz pretends to check his messages, but his eyes keep flicking toward me.
They know something is off.
The guys aren’t aware Willow saw me with my cock in another woman’s mouth less than a week after I fucked her in that storage room and convinced myself I could have her without ruining us.
But I can read a fucking room. They know Willow is missing and every set of eyes in here keeps finding me as if I dragged that shit into the empty space behind me.
Damon storms in twenty minutes later, his phone pressed to his ear and murder in his eyes.
“No,” he snaps. “No, I don’t give a shit what legal says yet. I want options before lunch.”
He stops when he sees all of us and lowers the phone. His eyes land on me first.
“What?” I say.
Damon ends the call. “Willow, fucking quit.”
Cruz’s head snaps up, his eyes locking onto me.
Jax stops moving entirely. “Fuck.”
Jett’s jaw locks so tight I can see the muscle twitch.
My hand tightens around the guitar neck. “What?”
Damon throws his phone onto the nearest chair. “She sent me one text last night. One. Said she was fucking done, then vanished before I could remind her that contracts do not give a shit about feelings.”
The words hit wrong because they confirm what some ugly part of me already knew.
The second my messages stopped going through, she had not just walked away from me. She had walked out on us. The band. The one thing none of us were supposed to fuck with.
“She’s probably just pissed,” I say, because it is easier than admitting she is gone.
Jax laughs but there is no humor in it. “Don’t you fucking do that.”
My eyes flick to him. “Do what?”
“Stand there and fucking act as if this is some tantrum she is throwing because you finally pushed her too far.”
“You got something to say?”
“Yeah.” Jax stands slowly and for once there is nothing loose or easy about him. “I’ve had plenty to say since the club, but everyone keeps acting like we should wait for you to grow a fucking conscience on your own.”
Cruz’s mouth tightens.
Jett looks down, then back at me, his voice colder than Jax’s. “Wills is gone because of you.”
I bark out a laugh that doesn’t sound like one. “You don’t know shit.”
“No,” Cruz says, pushing off the amp. “We don’t know everything, but we know enough. We saw her leave, then come back after you fucked her. We saw her face. We saw you go to the bar and act as if nothing had happened.”
Jax’s stare refuses to leave mine. “You made her look small, man.”
“Careful,” I say.
“Why?” Jax snaps. “You weren’t fucking careful with her.”
That shuts something in me up for half a second.
Jett’s voice cuts through the silence. “She has been bleeding around you for years and you kept calling it loyalty because it made you feel better.”
The words go straight under my ribs.
I hate that none of them look surprised. They’ve all been holding this. Waiting. Watching me turn Willow into something I could lean on, bleed into, and sing through, while still pretending I had not taken too much.
“Fuck you,” I say, because it is the only thing ugly enough to hide my guilt.
Jax shakes his head, and the expression on his face is worse than anger. “Yeah, that’s your answer to everything. Fuck it. Fuck her. Fuck us. And then act shocked when someone finally stops taking your shit.”
There it is. The truth.
Before I can turn it into something ugly enough to throw back at them, Damon looks around the room, already bored.
“Our album is not finished,” he says. “The release is close enough that the label is breathing down my fucking neck. We have deadlines, contracts, clearance issues, and three tracks left to record. She cannot fucking quit just because she is having feelings.”
Jett’s head lifts. “Watch your fucking mouth.”
Damon turns on him. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” Jett sets his coffee down, too calm, which tells me he is two seconds from losing it. “Don’t fucking stand there and make her sound weak just because she finally got tired of being treated like shit.”
Damon’s mouth hardens. “This is business.”
“No,” Jett says. “This is Willow. The woman who has been carrying half this band while you all stood around acting as if she should be grateful to be in the room.”
“Jett,” Cruz says, like a warning.
“No,” Jett snaps, eyes locked on Damon. “Some fucker has to say it.”
Damon points at him. “She signed contracts.”
“And Phoenix fucked it up,” Jett says. “But you’re still standing here talking about her as if she’s the problem, because it’s easier than admitting you both gave her a reason to leave.
You, Damon, did nothing but treat her like a product with a pulse.
And Phoenix, with whatever selfish shit he did this time.
” His eyes cut to mine. “And we all fucking know it.”
My stomach twists hard.
Cruz swears under his breath.
Damon starts pacing. “We have songs that need to be finalized.”
The guys keep arguing with Damon, their voices cutting over one another, but my eyes catch on Jax’s phone sitting beside his jacket.
Willow will not answer me. She might answer him. The thought hits me with enough ugliness to twist my stomach, but I put the guitar down and move before I think too hard about what I’m doing.
I swipe Jax’s phone, step out into the hallway, and keep walking.
My thumb moves quickly over Jax’s screen.
I pull up his messages. Willow’s thread is sixth from the top. I open it and the sight of her name on someone else’s phone makes something mean and hot crawl through my chest.
I type before I can stop myself.
Jax: Hey, can I come over and talk later?
I hold my breath as I wait for a reply.